Domus Dei

The story of my continuing conversion
By Gary Cox

The Lord has told us that if we believe in Him, follow His commandments, and live with an informed conscience this certainly would bring us to eternal life in His kingdom. I have many times pondered what it truly meant to “believe” in Jesus. To just say: “I believe in something”, “I believe in someone”, or “I have faith” seemed much too simple, there had to be more to it. People have often told me their opinion of the meaning of “believing” in Jesus and in these conversations it has usually been narrowed down to: “just believe Jesus came down from heaven and died for our sins and you will be saved.” You hear this often amongst Protestant groups due to their doctrine of “Sola Fide”, but surprisingly this is being heard more often amongst confused Catholics. Again, it had always sounded too easy for our Lord to simply command us to give intellectual assent to His existence and sacrifice and this would be sufficient to attain salvation. In the past I had always thought: “sure I believe in Jesus and I know He died for our sins; so I must be doing ok, right?”

True belief encompasses the heart, the mind, and the will.
One day walking to work the meaning of “believing” hit me. It actually scared me because I realized I didn’t truly believe as the Lord has asked of us. The meaning is actually deeper than just intellectual assent. Sure one must believe that Christ is Lord, believe He died on the cross for our sins, and trust in Him. But only believing with the mind will not save us because, as the Apostle Paul says, a Faith without works is dead! (James 2:26). There must be a substance to our belief, we must act on it, we must live it, and this is the true meaning of belief.

We can fully believe and trust in Christ with our mind, but if we fail in love of our neighbor (Matt 19:18-19), if we fail to live our lives as faithful Christians (Matt 24:13, 2 Peter 2:20), even a Faith strong enough to move mountains cannot not save us as the Apostle Paul reminds us, “if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:2). Faith must not stay in the mind, it must be lived.
Without an outlet for our faith, our faith is a dead faith. Take as an analogy, the Dead Sea. Why is it dead? No outlet! Water from the river Jordan flows into the Dead Sea dumping minerals and salt. Since there is nowhere for these elements to go, that is, there is no outlet, as the water evaporates the salinity rises and the Sea becomes unsuitable for life. So to our faith must be shared, it must be lived, it must have an outlet to go from us to others. If it has no outlet, our faith is dead (James:2:26). Therefore the true meaning of belief is to trust in God and do His will. As Jesus said of the man who built his house on the rock: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matt. 7:24) Therefore true belief in Christ is a Faith that is working in love (Galatians 5:6).

Trusting in Him
Trust in God and His loving mercy, for God cannot deceive. This is the area that scared me when I stopped and looked at my life. Many times I have overly feared financial situations or worried about my family’s health; as a father of four children I sometimes doubt my abilities to provide. While I was overly worrying about my life I didn’t stop to realize that the most important part was actually missing: trust in the Lord. You see, my worry became a distraction, and when it becomes so great that it impedes my relationship with God, that is when worry becomes a problem. Saint Padre Pio once said, “If you pray, why worry? And if you worry, why pray?”

Don’t get me wrong, worry and anxiety are not wrong in and of themselves. In fact, they are natural, without them we would not be human. Worry about the health of one’s children or family finances simply mean that your family’s well-being is important to you. It’s when that worry and anxiety become so great they become a distraction and cause us to doubt the Lord. This is no longer worry, it is despair. Worry should then never lead to thoughts of: “why would the Lord allow this to happen to me? Is there even a God? If there was surely my family wouldn’t be in this position. ” For many this road takes them right out of the Church, I have seen it many times.

Despair as defined by the Catholic Enclycopedia: “Despair, ethically regarded, is the voluntary and complete abandonment of all hope of saving one’s soul and of having the means required for that end.”
There is no room for despair if you truly believe the Lord is there for you and will take care of your spiritual needs. Sure financial distress may come, health may fail, you may have a child who gets sick or even a child that dies… But it is through these times that true faith in the Lord persists and even deepens. God never promised us paradise in this life, we don’t believe in a Gospel of “health and wealth”… However, God promised us the coming paradise for all the faithful who would truly believe and trust in him. What an awakening this was to realize I was so far off track in trusting in my Lord and Savior.

To believe in Jesus means trusting He is there taking care of you as well as doing His will. Remember, there is no challenge or problem too great for Him. I recently watched a movie entitled, “Facing the Giants”, and a line that stuck with me was this: “two farmers pray to God for rain as they were in a bad drought; one of the farmers gathered his tools and prepared the field for the new rain while the other just kept praying for rain. Which farmer do you think actually believed?”

Let Him into your heart and don’t shut the door on Him. He wants to be in our lives and express His love for us as a father does for His children. When you are tempted to commit a sin, turn away from it; believe in God and let Him guide you. He is the only one that will never let you down or deny you as long as you trust in Him and do His will.

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Gary Cox is a Software Engineer who lives in the Los Angeles-area along with his wife and 4 children.